Government vetos wind farm development

Reporter: Mary Gearin

MAXINE McKEW: Welcome to the program. Maxine McKew with you for the next fortnight while Kerry O'Brien takes a break. First tonight, to a story that sounds like it might have sprung from a Monty Python skit - but with the future of a $200 million development at stake, it's hardly a laughing matter. Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell's decision to veto a major wind farm project already approved by the Victorian Government, has sent feathers flying. Senator Campbell says the move will help protect the endangered orange-bellied parrot. But critics have branded the decision as ludicrous. It has implications for other major developments across the country, where environmentalists have been quick to cite other endangered species. Today saw reports of legal action to stop a $500 million road project on the border of Queensland and NSW, over concerns for the habitat of a tiny frog. So is this a brave, new, greener world for industry to navigate? Or is it more about politics than parrots? Mary Gearin reports.

MARY GEARIN: High in the sky somewhere over southern Victoria and Tasmania, there are about 140 small birds that don't know just how much they've changed the lay of the land below. This is the creature in question - the orange-bellied parrot.

SEAN DOOLEY: It's a pity that it's named orange-bellied parrot. It just sounds like something Monty Python would come up with to take the mickey out of birdwatchers because it's such a kind of finicky name. But they're actually quite a magnificent little creature. It's from from Tassie - if they called it the Princess Mary parrot or something, I'm sure a lot more people would care about it.

MARY GEARIN: Author and comedy writer Sean Dooley is one of many avid bird lovers who do care very deeply about this endangered bird, but its greatest fan seems to be the Federal Environmental Minister. Senator Ian Campbell stepped in to scupper a Federal Government approved $220 million wind farm development in Bald Hills on the south-eastern coast. He says it was to protect the rare remaining parrots from being crushed by turbines. That's despite no recorded sightings of the orange-bellied parrot within 10 kilometres of the site.

SENATOR IAN CAMPBELL, FEDERAL ENVIRONMENT MINISTER: I'm required under the law to put in place a recovery plan to make sure that this bird does not go extinct. The Victorian Government has said in its own propaganda that they share that view.

MARY GEARIN: The decision was based on a report saying about one parrot might be killed each year. Not just by this development, but by all 23 proposed and current wind farms in the region. And the Victorian Government has told the 7:30 Report, its new departmental analysis throws up even longer odds.

ROB HULLS, VICTORIAN PLANNING MINISTER: When you actually bring that down to Bald Hills, there is a potential for one dead parrot every 1,000 years, every 1,000 years!

SENATOR IAN CAMPBELL: The Victorian Government has in place a recovery plan for the orange-bellied parrot that has seen residential developments, marina proposals, harbour proposals, chemical plants - all of these things stopped or radically relocated to try to save the orange-bellied parrot.

DOMINIQUE LA FONTAINE, AUSTRALIAN WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION: We're concerned and very confused as to how the report that the minister based his decision on - how that enabled the minister to arrive at the decision that he did.

CLIVE HAMILTON, THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE: Really, the minister is a disgrace. He's not the Minister for the Environment, he's the minister against the environment.

MARY GEARIN: Critics of the decision, like the Australia Institute's Clive Hamilton, point to the fact that Bald Hills just happens to lie in what was an ALP marginal federal seat won by the Liberals in the last election after an anti-wind farm campaign. Many locals are happy with the decision to ban the turbines, even if it's thanks to a parrot they've never laid eyes on.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: I don't think the parrot really made a difference. I don't think we want them anyway.

MARY GEARIN: Are people happy that the orange-bellied parrot will be protected?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I've never seen one.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: What sensible parrot is going to run into a building of any sort anyway, really?

MARY GEARIN: For all sides of the debate, this is not just about one bird, it's about how it will affect wind energy investment across the country and whether birds as well as the environment will get sucked into political turbines far from this Bald Hills site. The one rare bird has raised the stakes in a flock of anti-development claims. Suddenly the orange-bellied parrot and brolgas were, perhaps, more likely to stymie two other proposed wind farms in Victoria. In Western Australia, the night parrot was pitted against an iron ore mine. And in yet other cases the swift parrot, the legless lizard and the golden sun moth entered the political arena as potential major players. The problem for any development across the nation that needs the minister's green light is that the Bald Hills decision has raised the bar to an unprecedented height, surprising even supporters of the decision.

GRAEME HAMILTON, BIRDS AUSTRALIA: Certainly, it sets a very high standard in terms of what we would perceive as an acceptable risk to the orange-bellied parrot and on that basis it's then going to be interesting to see how that translates consistently into other development applications, be they wind farms or other coastal development that might affect the salt marshes.

SEAN DOOLEY: What baffles us is that the Federal Government sat on its hands when other wind farm proposals were approved and were built in western Victoria right near established orange-bellied parrot habitat.

ROB HULLS: It's going to cause long-term damage, long-term damage to renewable energy, long-term damage to investment confidence. Not just in Victoria, but in this country generally. And that's why the PM has to show some leadership and overturn this ludicrous decision.

MARY GEARIN: The Federal Minister says every case is different, and that might mean a very different decision is made regarding a proposed development on Tasmania's west coast as early as this week. There, the turbines might be further apart helping the birds fly through.

SENATOR IAN CAMPBELL: We generally and I think in over 150 cases in recent years we've put very strict conditions on developments, proposals, that have been put in place to protect Australia's environment, our wildlife and our unique flora. That is the more usual course.

CLIVE HAMILTON: The Government trumpeted its new legislation as a brave new world of environmental protection, but in fact, this new legislation, which has been operating for five or six years, is a farce. It's been applied only three times in hundreds of potential cases.

SENATOR IAN CAMPBELL: Well, you can't have it both ways. I can't be criticised for using my powers to protect a rare and endangered Australian bird and then be criticised for not protecting them enough.

MARY GEARIN: The Federal Minister can count among his supporters Andrew Chapman, a long-time advocate of the Bald Hills wetlands. He says the decision was sensibly cautious.

ANDREW CHAPMAN: The science of how birds will avoid the turbines or not just isn't that advanced. As I say, there's only a small number of wind farms of a small number of turbines in Australia. We do not have the skill level to be able to predict low kill rates from turbines.

MARY GEARIN: What worries the wind energy companies is just how many developments will now be stymied by what appears to be a new environmental standard when they were already struggling to get more subsidies from the Federal Government.

DOMINIQUE LA FONTAINE: The Federal Government made a very good start with the introduction of the mandatory energy renewable target, but that market that that policy created is all but subscribed.

MARY GEARIN: But Senator Campbell says the cost of extending the subsidy is too high and the Government is better off encouraging other low emission technologies. The issue has sparked a tit-for-tat war over planning power. The Federal Minister has pointed to a previous Victorian decision to ban a wind farm for the sake of the wedge-tailed eagle, saying that shows the State's decision-making process is inconsistent. Victoria counters each of its cases is judged independently on its own merits. Nevertheless, Senator Campbell is keen to wrangle a nationally unified approach to wind farms.

SENATOR IAN CAMPBELL: I will be taking that forward at a meeting of State ministers in the next few weeks. And I look forward to cooperating with those States who want to ensure that local communities feel empowered, that want to give wind energy a good name.

MARY GEARIN: Meanwhile, bird lovers can only hope to one day track down the illusive character that tracked down this affair.

SEAN DOOLEY: I got my hopes up. I knew it was a parrot.

MARY GEARIN: That's not an orange-bellied parrot?

SEAN DOOLEY: No, not an orange-bellied parrot. That was a budgie that's escaped from somebody's cage.

GRAEME HAMILTON, BIRDS AUSTRALIA: You can laugh along with some aspects of all jokes but at some stage you have to say this is actually very serious and the loss of species is not funny and we need to address it very, very seriously.